


Forgetting, Remembering

by WithLoweredVoices



Series: Letters To A Ghost [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Death, Dreams, Hurt, Johnlock - Freeform, Letters, Loss, M/M, Nightmares, Non-established Johnlock, PTSD, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-16
Updated: 2012-07-16
Packaged: 2017-11-10 01:46:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WithLoweredVoices/pseuds/WithLoweredVoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John writes a letter to a deceased flatmate about wishes, would-have beens, flying, falling, and loneliness. Final part to Letters To A Ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgetting, Remembering

I thought I saw you today.

I moved back into the flat. Some of your papers are still here. I need them.

I don't know why I keep writing. It's not as though you would ever see any of this. But if you were here, I wouldn't have to address my letters, or sign them, or even write the date because you would deduce all of that. And I would tell you that it's brilliant, or use some other derivative of the word. And you would pretend not to be pleased, but I would know that you were smiling.

I can't think about the would-have-beens. I can't do that.

.  
  


The nightmares have changed since then. Things with teeth. Monsters under the bed. I see you flying, with dark wings spread out as though you could catch the rising wind. You're so thin you would have lifted away, spiraling like the snow. The wings tear apart. They're only wax, and they melt into the ground, deep red and dirty brown. Always, always, always, I run to you, but the bullet hits me hard in the shoulder. It bursts into flames and I am burning. I hit the ground the same time you do, only you're covered in blood, and me, in fire.

I know what fire feels like. I know what burning flesh smells like. I can almost taste the thick murk of it on my tongue when I wake up.

I don't remember how your hands feel anymore. We did hold hands, once, running in the dark, cuffed at the wrist. I remember the shape of your wrist, the colour of the leather, but not the weight, not the texture, and not the temperature. You would have catalogued it all down, wouldn't you? Every little detail would be stored away in your mind palace. You'd never forget me.

I don't want to forget you. It's normal. That's what my therapist says. Forgetting is natural. The brain can only store so much information.

What about you? Damnit, Holmes, what about you?

  
.

It wasn't you, though, because he was in a hoodie, his head was practically shaved, and his shoulders were slouched. He didn't even look at me, except maybe once, since I stared so long I think he might have thought me a stalker.  
  


I'm seeing things, my therapist tells me. Looking for things in the dark that aren't mine to keep. I should let you go. I think she conspires with Donovan. I ran into Donovan in a supermarket, and she just smiled painfully at me, shifting from side to side like she wanted to run.

'Don't you think it's time to move on?' she told me. Those words precisely.

I told her to go fuck herself. I'm not usually so crude, especially not with women. Then again, I never punched an official before I met you.

No one tells you to just move on from the war. No one expects you to recover from it. They think you will have terrible dreams for the rest of your life. They expect you to become alcoholics, violent men, murderers, depressives. They send flowers and cards. And yet no one seems to understand that you're my war. You're death and blood and explosives at three in the morning.

And you're the git that makes bad tea when you think it'll make me forgive you. You play my favourite Christmas carols when you think I'm not listening. You let me splint your fingers after a stupid fight, and you let me drag you out of the Thames when you decide it's a good night for corpse-hunting. You give me date advice that sounds more like jealous banter, and still tell me that I'm a bore after you've deduced the entire mucked-up evening down to the last detail.

You were my universe, Sherlock Holmes.

So I didn't see you in the street, because you're dead, and I'm alone.

I'm alone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> And voila, the end of the series. I should apologise for leaving it at such a miserable, unfinished end, but just tie it in with Shifting Shadows.


End file.
